tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14629053781942903612010-06-04T08:53:11.717+10:00After 10 years of working with Windows, in late 2009, I finally made the switch to Linux Ubuntu. These are the chronicles of my adventures.Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-53010569824889708372010-06-04T08:53:00.000+10:002010-06-04T08:53:11.728+10:002010-06-04T08:53:11.728+10:00

Today, VirtualBox wanted to upgrade itself from 3.1.8 to 3.2.2. Hmmm... what ever happened to "Check for updates - once per Day"? I've been running it every day since May 5. But for some reason, the May 18 update to 3.2 was missed for a WHOLE two weeks. What's interesting is, now that Oracle have bought out Sun, VirtualBox has now been liberally rebadged with the Oracle branding. It nearly

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-52917556771896285252010-05-05T19:19:00.001+10:002010-05-07T11:09:27.262+10:002010-05-07T11:09:27.262+10:00

Given my recent issues with upgrading to Lucid, I figured now would be a good opportunity to switch to running my dev environment under VirtualBox. Rather than installing Ubuntu 9.10 Server, I decided to go with the Turnkey LAMP Stack. The Turnkey LAMP web appliance comes with Webmin, MySQL 5.0, PHP 5.2.4, PhpMyAdmin, Perl and Python, and was really easy to install. I simply created a new VM in

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-30639788992728753072010-05-05T18:47:00.004+10:002010-05-05T18:59:26.226+10:002010-05-05T18:59:26.226+10:00

So... Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx was released a few days ago. Ordinarily, I'm not one to update to the latest and greatest. And for a bloody good reason. It's moments like these, a favorite saying comes to mind... "when you’re living on the bleeding edge, you should not be surprised when you do, in fact, bleed.". Ouch! For starters, the automatic upgrade caused a few problems. Initially, it

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-35352652727921614622010-05-01T14:20:00.003+10:002010-05-05T18:47:54.689+10:002010-05-05T18:47:54.689+10:00

Are you one of the 10% of programmers who can write a binary search? http://reprog.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/are-you-one-of-the-10-percent/

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-29062817753045919932010-05-01T14:13:00.003+10:002010-05-05T18:50:15.364+10:002010-05-05T18:50:15.364+10:00

Sorry for the lateness in updating this. To be honest, there's nothing much to report. Putting the box together was pretty straightforward - it was just a standard PC build. Getting it to work was also pretty straightforward. I installed Mythbuntu straight up and immediately decided I really didn't like the XFCE desktop. Since this box was also going to serve as the wife's computer, I ended up

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-3626063509978549322010-04-15T08:13:00.001+10:002010-04-15T09:56:33.795+10:002010-04-15T09:56:33.795+10:00

First, we need to change the postgres password in the database: $ sudo su postgres -c psql template1 At the postgres prompt: postgres=# ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'password'; Now type \q to quit: postgres=# \q Now we need to do the same for the Unix user 'postgres': $ sudo su postgres -c passwd Enter the SAME password as the ALTER USER command above to change the Unix password.

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-41892232107064042182010-03-07T10:45:00.001+10:002010-03-07T10:50:05.342+10:002010-03-07T10:50:05.342+10:00

At the moment, we're watching DVDs on an old PS2, hooked up to an old 20" analogue TV - with no TV reception. So I'm watching all my favorite ABC iView and FTA "catch-up TV" shows on my computer. Seeing as how the analogue TV network is going to be dismantled early next year in our area, and the fact that almost all new release movies are coming out on BD, it was time to consider upgrading.

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-9433030936696690012010-03-07T09:27:00.005+10:002010-03-08T08:11:40.550+10:002010-03-08T08:11:40.550+10:00

I've been trying to set Postfix up on my dev box for some time now. Essentially, I wanted to be able to route all outgoing mail sent from Apache/PHP to a Thunderbird mailbox, so that I can check the message formatting and headers. After much googling, I found this post, and finally managed to get it working. Basically, the concept is simple - we simply need to map postfix's smtp and relay to

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-88733848710921898072010-02-05T14:02:00.003+10:002010-03-07T10:52:21.470+10:002010-03-07T10:52:21.470+10:00

No, this has got nothing to do with the 1993 John Candy movie of the same title. It's been hot here the last month. So hot in fact, that I had to take the side panel off the Acer Veriton S661, every day for the last month, to provide more ventilation. No more! Early last week, the new Thermaltake V3 case (on the right) arrived in the mail. With little haste, I gutted the Acer, in the process

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-80310031579687349282010-02-05T12:51:00.003+10:002010-02-05T12:54:06.316+10:002010-02-05T12:54:06.316+10:00

So, I got myself a set of Creative A200 speakers and subwoofer last week. Pity the subwoofer didn't come bass and treble controls. What use is a subwoofer without bass and treble control? Fortunately, you can tweak the bass and treble thru software using one of the following options: Rhythmbox Plugin If you use Rhythmbox, which I do, you can try the 10-band graphic equalizer plugin from the

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-22541967942721711242010-01-07T10:06:00.008+10:002010-03-01T09:31:17.339+10:002010-03-01T09:31:17.339+10:00

If you ever need to change the htpasswd to access the phpMyAdmin setup script, this might help: sudo htpasswd /etc/phpmyadmin/htpasswd.setup admin Note, the default username is admin - assuming (1) you are running Apache and (2) you installed phpMyAdmin via apt-get. The phpMyAdmin .deb installer creates the following file /etc/apache2/conf.d/phpmyadmin.conf Inside this file, you'll find this

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-30227505350772957152010-01-04T09:02:00.000+10:002010-01-04T09:02:39.203+10:002010-01-04T09:02:39.203+10:00

I stumbled upon Pastie.org today. Nice!

Ignatiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02016482093352340334noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-26996359840771322262010-01-01T12:37:00.002+10:002010-01-01T12:40:47.177+10:002010-01-01T12:40:47.177+10:00

Choices. Too many choices. Mongrel + Apache, or mod_passenger? I just want something that actually works - the way it's supposed to work in a real environment. Apparently, Passenger doesn't play nice with PHP5: WARNING: libapache2-mod-passenger installation uninstalls libapache2-mod-php5 and php5. Nice. As Dirty Harry would say, "Swell". Just f**king swell. Why can't we all play nicely

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-75237215193133870812010-01-01T09:37:00.002+10:002010-01-01T11:01:56.788+10:002010-01-01T11:01:56.788+10:00

I got a note from Monty this morning. Sounds ominous. Bad way to start the new year. Oracle has apparently launched another takeover bid of Sun. What does this mean in lay-person parlance? Basically, it will most likely lead to less competition between Oracle's product offerings and Sun's product lines - including MySQL. That's the only logical reasoning for one company to buy another company's

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-81561041072670007292009-12-31T18:04:00.004+10:002010-01-01T09:44:50.375+10:002010-01-01T09:44:50.375+10:00

This week was fun... not. I decided to try out the Elastic Computing stuff that came with Ubuntu, and attempted to setup a private cloud using Eucalyptus. Problem is I don't have a couple of spare machines lying around. (The tower is still sitting forlornly in the corner gutted... and will remain so indefinitely. I plan to retire the poor thing and get a new case with a beefed up PSU).

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-9192780805244609932009-12-28T16:10:00.006+10:002010-01-03T10:58:20.798+10:002010-01-03T10:58:20.798+10:00

Righto chaps! Where's the gear? Today, I installed (OK, Jeff helped too), a new MoBo and CPU for the boys. Their new X'mas pressie from me. (Yeah, you guys owe me big time now. Dishes for the next year!). Took the old MoBo out, stuck the new board in with its shiny new Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 2.8GHz. Hit the power button. And... Nothing... nada... zip.. zilch. Me: "Jeff, did you plug

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-86242922798296671262009-12-27T23:03:00.024+10:002010-01-01T12:41:48.428+10:002010-01-01T12:41:48.428+10:00

I must have rocks in my head. Well, actually gemstones. Red gemstones. Rubies. I picked up the Simply Rails 2 book, which I bought months ago, and attempted to read it again. OK, so far I get it. Everything in Ruby is an object. No problem there, since I'm fairly au fait with OOP. But the syntax is different. Very different. OK, this will take some getting used to. It's nothing like a C derived

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-39956622529167284252009-11-17T10:36:00.001+10:002009-12-31T23:02:10.326+10:002009-12-31T23:02:10.326+10:00

In my zealousness, I neglected to consider the ramifications of switching to Linux and 90% of the *other* people running Windows. Who cares about what other people use? Well, apparently *some* people still use IE... (Hey, doesn't everyone use Firefox or Chrome these days? Why the heck not?). Silly me. I don't build websites. I'm a web programmer. I program web applications. It's the designer's

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-56995854233820807832009-11-12T10:20:00.001+10:002010-01-01T11:08:00.405+10:002010-01-01T11:08:00.405+10:00

If you don't know what RCS, VCS, CVS, or SVN mean, then you haven't really programmed anything worth mentioning. All good programmers would know what these are and what they're used for. If you still keep different backups of your code in filesystem directories, then it's probably time you checked out how SVN can make your life, as a programmer, so much easier when it comes to managing code

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-73384256169034785262009-11-12T09:48:00.001+10:002010-01-01T09:46:21.701+10:002010-01-01T09:46:21.701+10:00

WinMerge was my tool of choice for merges and diffs. Now I have to find one that runs on Linux. After digging around the web, I stumbled upon Meld. From the project's SourceForge home page: Meld is a visual diff and merge tool. You can compare two or three files and edit them in place (diffs update dynamically). You can compare two or three folders and launch file

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-70907711810938331852009-11-11T20:46:00.002+10:002010-01-04T09:04:41.672+10:002010-01-04T09:04:41.672+10:00

According to Wikipedia: Ke-mo sah-bee (pronounced /ˌkiːmoʊˈsɑːbi/, us dict: kē′·mō·sâ′·bē; often spelled kemo sabe or kemosabe) is the term of endearment used by the fictional Native American Tonto (and sometimes the Ranger himself) in the radio and television program The Lone Ranger, said to mean "trusty scout" or "faithful friend" in Potawatomi. Whether the term itself is of Apache origin is

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-16404437432834169472009-09-20T21:48:00.000+10:002009-12-31T22:52:35.331+10:002009-12-31T22:52:35.331+10:00

I don't play many PC games (other than UrT, which BTW is working really well - except I need to do something about the ADSL2+ latency issues), but sometimes one needs a little diversion from building boringly mundane static websites. Like Windows, Ubuntu installs a few basic logic games like Solitaire, Mine Sweeper and Tetris. However, Ubuntu appears to have a broader selection of games in

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1462905378194290361.post-48653759031285536852009-09-10T20:19:00.001+10:002010-01-01T10:53:14.264+10:002010-01-01T10:53:14.264+10:00

For the last 9 or so years, I had a working WinXP setup running Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Eclipse. It had since undergone numerous tweaks, "essential security" updates, 3 Service Packs, and survived 4 machine rebuilds. In its final incarnation, it was running on, what is now my current machine - an Acer S661 Veriton small form-factor running an Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0GHz, 6GB RAM and 200GB

Ignatius Teonoreply@blogger.com0